Falling to Pieces [puzzle time trials]

I was lurking on Reddit when I came across a post from the subreddit Hobby Drama, which details all the petty details of drama in any niche hobby you can imagine. One week in their “hobby scuffles” post where people are allowed to talk about almost anything, someone posted about watching an entire 40-minute video about the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship. Of course I had to see what that was about. At the competition, competitors are given puzzles of various sizes that they have to solve in under a set time. For a 500-piece puzzle, they were allotted 90 minutes, which is a short enough time that I could easily try it out for myself, because I was curious to see how feasible it was for someone who’s pretty fast (I think) compared to a casual puzzler, but nowhere near world champion speeds.

For my first attempt, I assembled a 500-piece puzzle of a giant girl jump roping on a bridge with a city in the background, by Ravensburger. This was not a great choice for a speed solve because of the muted and limited color palette and minimal distinctive features, but it was what we found at the library. At the 90 minute mark, I had completed most of the girl, the sky, and the water and bridge at the bottom. In the end, it took me just over two hours to finish the puzzle, half an hour longer than the competition time limit.

Giant jump rope girl (left: at the 90 minute mark, right: finished puzzle)

A few weeks later, I tried again with another Ravensburger puzzle, this one of a European-looking cobblestone street with a café, other shops and apartments, and people strolling along enjoying the day. This puzzle was a better candidate, with a greater variety of colors, but it still had large areas with a single texture/color (e.g. the street and building facades), which again, isn’t ideal for speed solving. However, I did manage to complete the puzzle in under 90 minutes, with a time of 1:28:32, showing that it is indeed possible for a fast-ish hobby puzzler to finish a 500-piece puzzle within an hour and a half.

European street

To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I borrowed a very Lisa-Frank-esque puzzle of dolphins in a slightly psychedelic sea from the library. It was manufactured by Cra-Z-Art, maker of subpar crayons but okay jigsaw puzzles. The fit of the puzzle pieces wasn’t as nice as Ravensburger, but was definitely still well within acceptable limits. I was concerned about the amount of blue, but was able to finish the puzzle in less than 90 minutes (in 1:28:49).

Psychedelic sea dolphins

Just for fun at this point, I did one last Ravensburger 500-piece puzzle of lockers containing assorted sports equipment. I thought it would be a straightforward solve because each locker was a different color, but it ended up being trickier that I anticipated and still took me an hour and 28 minutes flat. Since I seem to be stuck around the 1:28 mark, I’ll probably try a few more puzzles to see if I can get any faster without really trying vs. using more optimization techniques (fully sorting pieces, doing the edges sooner, etc.), though it does take some of the fun out of it.

Sports lockers